Highway Bill Heads For Bush Showdown

May 12, 2005|By Richard Simon Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — Setting up a showdown with President Bush, the Senate moved Wednesday toward approval of a $295 billion highway bill that the White House has threatened to veto as excessive in the face of huge budget deficits.

A majority of Republicans joined Democrats in voting to exceed, by about $11 billion, the spending limit set by the White House and endorsed in a budget agreement adopted by Congress two weeks ago.

The 76-22 vote on a motion to raise the spending limit -- a display of bipartisanship in a chamber headed toward a partisan showdown over the use of filibusters to block judicial nominees -- underscored the power of pothole politics.

The highway bill, expected to be one of the biggest pieces of legislation to come before Congress this year, has become a test of what deficit hawks hope will be a more determined effort by Bush to rein in spending. Bush has yet to veto a bill during his presidency.

But the bill also is among the most popular, with legislators from both parties eager to show they are doing something about everybody's favorite gripe: traffic congestion.

The Senate is expected to pass the bill by the end of the week. That will set up negotiations with the House, whose version of the legislation adhered to the $284 billion spending limit set by the administration.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, called the bill a "budget-buster" that violates the administration's $284-billion limit.

"What the heck are we doing?" Gregg asked. "Since the president has decided to try to exercise some fiscal discipline, it would seem that we, as the party which is allegedly the party of fiscal discipline, would follow his lead rather than try to run him over."

Scott Milburn, a spokesman for the White House budget office, said after the vote, "The administration's position is well known and unchanged.

"If Congress passes a bill that exceeds $283.9 billion, the president's senior advisers will recommend that he veto it."

The budget office has pointed out that at $284 billion, the highway bill represents a 35 percent spending increase from the last big transportation legislation, approved in 1998.

The vote also drew criticism from budget watchdogs.

"At a time when Democrats and Republicans are always at each other's throats, we can take comfort that they still agree on breaking the budget for highways," Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group, said sarcastically. "Pork knows no party label."

He expressed concern that the Senate vote could open the door to other efforts to exceed spending limits.